Whilst he was thus speaking, we reached the dense circle already formed. On seeing a stranger approach, they made room for me; and curiosity to witness this mode of execution, the remnant of barbarous times, as well as to see the Italian, induced me to enter the Place de Grève.
At the first glance I recognised Mascalbruni. He was stripped of his shirt, and on his knees; by his side was a Jesuit to whom he had just made his confession; and over him, on an elevation from the ground by means of a large stone, stood the prevôt, with a sword of prodigious length and antique shape, and covered with the rust of ages, pendent in his hands.
The lower part of Mascalbruni's face was fallen, whilst all above the mouth was drawn upward as from some powerful convulsion. The eyes, that used to bear the semblance of living coals, had in them a concentrated and sullen gloom. The cold and damp of the cell, and the scantiness of his diet, which consisted of bread and water, had worn his cheek to the bone, and given it the sallowness of one in the black stage of cholera. His face was covered with a thick beard, every hair of which stood distinct from its fellows; and his matted locks, thickly sprinkled with grey, trailed over his ghastly features and neck in wild disorder. His shoulders down to the waist were, as I said, bare; and they and his arms displayed anatomically a muscular strength that might have served as a model for a gladiator. Over all was thrown an air of utter prostration moral and physical,—the desolation of despair.
A few yards to the right, the priest, with his eyes uplifted to heaven, seemed absorbed in prayer; and between them the bourreau, who might have superseded Tristan in his office, and been a dangerous rival in the good graces of Louis the Eleventh. He called to mind a figure of Rubens',—not the one who is turning round in the Descent of the Cross at Antwerp, and saying to the thief, writhing in horrible contortions after he has wrenched his lacerated foot from the nail, "Sacre, chien,"—but a soldier in another of his pictures in the Gallery at Brussels (the representation of some martyrdom,) who has just torn off the ear of the saint with a pair of red-hot pincers, and is eyeing it with a savage complacency.
It was, in short, exactly such a group, with its pyramidical form and startling contrasts of colour and expression, as the great Flemish painter could have desired.
A dead silence, which the natural horror, the novelty of the scene created, prevailed among the assembled crowd; and it spoke well for the morality and good feeling of the simple peasantry, that not a woman was present on the occasion.
The hand of the swordsman was raised, and the stroke fell on the neck of the culprit; but, horrible to say,—what was it then to witness?—though given with no common vigour, so blunt was the instrument, that, instead of severing the head, it only inflicted a gash which divided the tendons of the neck, and the undecapitated body fell doubled up, whilst only a few gouts of blood issued from the wound.
The tortured wretch's groans and exclamations found an echo in all bosoms; and it was not till after two more sabre strokes that the head lay apart, and rolled upwards in the dust. I then saw what I have heard described of Charlotte Cordé, after she had been guillotined;—the muscles of the face were convulsed as if with sensibility, and the eyes glared with horrid meaning, as though the soul yet lingered there. Even the executioner could scarcely meet their scowl without shuddering.
It was the first and last spectacle of this kind at which I mean ever to be present; and I should not have awaited its awful termination, could I have penetrated through the living wall that was a barrier to my exit.
You may now guess from whom I obtained many of the details contained in this memoir of Mascalbruni. It was from the confessor, who had endeavoured, but in vain, to give him spiritual consolation in the dungeon and at the block. The Jesuit and myself had mutual revelations to make to each other, connecting the present with the past, and which have enabled me to weave the dark tissue of his life's thread into one piece. I repeat the last words of the good old man at our final interview,—"May God have mercy on his soul!"